The second half had barely started when Will jogged onto the pitch. He came on for Kyle, the right midfielder, and slipped into the right side of the attacking line in a 4-2-3-1. It wasn’t the slot that felt like home to him. He would rather have been the ten, finding pockets between the midfield and defense, drifting into the spaces where he could pull strings. David’s instructions were unambiguous, however: give width, stretch Sheffield’s defensive shape, and look for combinations with Daniel through the middle when the chance appeared.

His first ten minutes were deliberate. Not tentative in the way that reads as fear, but purposeful; a measured settling. He scanned more than he moved, allowing the rhythms of the game to become legible before committing himself. He checked where Marcus and Liam were running, measured the positioning of the opposing full-back, and tracked the midfield’s balance. It felt like tuning an instrument before playing the solo.

In the fifty-fifth minute he received the ball from the right back. He took a single touch inside, inviting the Sheffield left back to close down, then clipped it first-time back to the overlapping full-back. The overlap worked: the right back’s cross curled into the box and Callum met it with a glance that drifted fractionally wide. It was the sort of chance that could have been a goal; it instead became a near-miss that left the crowd a half-breath short.

Will stayed patient and purposeful. A minute here and there were exchanges, brief possessions, the kind of small sequences that don’t make the headlines but that build the pattern of a half. In the sixtieth minute he found himself deeper than usual, near halfway, still on the right flank. Three Sheffield players converged in a tight triangular press. Will didn’t panic. He turned away from them, allowed the pressure to fold around him and used two conservative touches to drag one of the trio back toward his own half. Then, without theatrics, he slipped a short sideways pass to Marcus. Where there had been suffocating cover for twenty minutes, a lane opened for a sliver of time, four seconds, no more, on the left where Liam was already beginning a run.

Marcus saw it and served it. Liam took the ball and bent his body toward goal. He sent a cross that struck the woodwork hard enough to make the net shiver and the crowd draw a collective breath. David, on the touchline, clapped once, a single, exact sound, not celebratory but approving.

Still not the number he wanted.

The match tightened. Sheffield United were a disciplined unit: they had closed the gap in their heat maps since the interval, their high line retreating in measured increments as if their coaching team had whispered a small correction during the break. Will could see the symmetry of it when he watched their back four; where they had been flat and aggressive earlier they were now more guarded, the space between midfield and defense less hospitable.

He was thinking about the adjustments, about timing and angles, when the system surfaced an observation in the sixty-eighth minute. They were only in the centre circle because play had stopped for a Sheffield throw-in; the ball was stagnant, a small island of inactivity, and Will felt the same hollow concentration that comes when you watch something you’re about to step back into.

Three minutes later he had the ball again on the flank. The left back came at him, hands wide in a posturing meant to shepherd him down the line. Will shaped as if he were going to go outside, planted a foot, and then cut inside within the precise interval the system had highlighted. The defender bit on the bait and with almost mechanical reluctance stepped away from his line, creating the small, perfect crevice that strikers dream of. Will burst into it.

For three seconds everything mattered at a different scale, timing, body position, the way the leather felt as it slid under his boot. He drove across the inside channel and noticed the striker making the diagonal run, sweeping left to right, the kind of run that unknits a defence when it’s timed properly. Will didn’t look for glory. He threaded a firm, low pass that threaded the narrow gap between two Sheffield centre-halves. It travelled on a plane the defenders hadn’t allowed for, skimming the grass and cutting across the defensive line with surgical intent.

Callum met it, took one controlled touch, and finished low to the goalkeeper’s right. The net rippled in a single, clean motion.

One nil.

Will spread his arms before Callum had even turned away from the goal. The team converged on the scorer with all the noise and the collapse that accompanies a decisive moment. Shouts collided with the thump of boots and the stamping heartbeat of the crowd. Will was caught in the middle of the human mass, faces and shoulder blades and jerseys and breath. Something he usually kept tucked down inside, a sharp, private flare of relief and joy, split open for about four seconds, and then he drew it back close as the others crowded in.

[Ding!]

[Assist registered: 25 Credits]

[Match Rating update: 7.8]

He still didn’t have the 8.0 he’d been chasing.

Sheffield chased the game thereafter. Their shape sharpened into desperation rather than discipline: they pushed more bodies forward and in doing so left gaps that had previously been sealed. Middlesbrough dug in. Will did things defensive players rarely brag about, tracking back, tightening space, making decisions with an eye on angles rather than aesthetics. He won two aerial challenges, neither graceful. His body told him the work in the air was not designed for his frame; his calves tightened, his shoulders complained. Still, both headers went the way they needed to, the kind of unglamorous actions that tilt the scoreboard in your favour.

In the eighty-second minute a Sheffield corner came in with the kind of menace that makes the stomach tighten. Will tracked a late runner toward the six-yard box and made a choice: stay goalside, take the body weight, and force the runner into a frame where the incoming ball would be contested. As the ball arced in he kept his focus on the leather and timed his move. The runner pulled away at the last moment, a feint that would have been worked to perfection against someone who panicked. Will did not follow the displacement. He stayed where he was, lined his body, and met the ball with his forehead, sending it clear from the six-yard line in a thumping, uncompromising foil to the cross.

It was a messy clearance in some book. To the people around him it was everything that counted in the seconds when games are held together by small acts. The ball left his head with a force that sounded like a conclusion. The crowd exhaled and the tension in the stadium shifted a degree toward relief.

[Ding!]

[Match Rating update: 8.0]

The final whistle came with the scoreboard showing one nil. Players who had been part of the pattern of the game walked off the pitch in varying moods; some with fists tucked into gloves, others with hands on hips. Will’s legs felt hollow in that precise, exhausted way that follows a real exertion: every step was an affirmation that he had given something physical and very particular. His socks bore dark grass stains where the turf had taken a chunk of him during the defensive header; there was mud on both knees, evidence of a slide he couldn’t quite recall with pride but could remember in detail.

David was there as he reached the tunnel, not an embrace but a measured appraisal. "Good half," he said with the same flat, accurate tone he used all the time. It wasn’t warmth or posturing. It was just the thing that comes after a manager has watched numbers and context and found them acceptable.

"Thank you," Will said.

"Your match awareness has improved significantly." David said. "How are you doing it?"

Will examined him for a moment. He thought of the system and how it had offered the amber numbers at the edges of his vision, the 1.8-second window, the passing lane calculations. He also thought of all the hours that had nothing to do with tech: the sessions on the training ground, the habitual glances over the shoulder, the quiet discipline of watching the play develop.

"Working on my scanning before I receive," he said finally. "Trying to have a picture of the pitch before the ball arrives."

David nodded once. "Keep at it."

David walked off, and Will stayed in the tunnel for a few more moments, breathing and letting the adrenaline wash away.

He went to get changed, tired in the way that feels earned, carrying the quiet satisfaction of a job done the way he had planned it.